4.1 The Plan for North Lanarkshire is now well established and sets the long-term strategic direction for the Council, partners, and other stakeholders and, most importantly, for each unique local community and the people who Live, Learn, Work, Invest, and Visit within North Lanarkshire. It’s a Plan with a shared ambition of inclusive growth and prosperity for all and a fairer distribution of wealth across all local communities.

4.2 The long-term ambition established through The Plan for North Lanarkshire coupled with the fast moving, unpredictable, and increasingly challenging and complex local government environment, means planning and change are constantly evolving and ongoing visibility into all programmes of work and their interconnections is essential.

4.3 ​​​​​​​The Programme of Work process (established in 2019) provides a clear roadmap for work across Council services and with partners. It allows for plans of action to be developed that inform the projects, activities, services, technologies, and resources that need to be harnessed in order to seize the most and best opportunities to deliver on the long-term strategy, while achieving value for money in the here and now. Directing policies and plans to support delivery of The Plan for North Lanarkshire, the Programme of Work process is instrumental in bringing together the elements that support strategic planning, local development, enterprise activities, and community investment in a cohesive manner. The third annual iteration of the Programme of Work (for 2021/22) was approved in March 2021.

​​​​​​​4.4 The changes required to deliver on the long-term ambition present both opportunities and challenges. To realise the ambition, the Council must continue to engage in a broad range of innovative and transformative programmes of work and projects in order to maintain services for residents in local communities which are efficient and effective, while targeting resources towards those individuals in the most vulnerable situations and ensuring value for money.

​​​​​​​4.5 The Strategic Governance Framework has been developed taking into account the local environment within which the Council operates. It brings the principles of good governance together with legislative requirements and management processes by which the Council is directed and controlled and through which it is accountable to, engages with, and leads the local community. This aims to ensure the Council is able to effectively pursue the long-term ambition set out in The Plan for North Lanarkshire, while ensuring this is underpinned with control and the management of risk, and:

• Resources are directed in accordance with agreed policies and according to priorities and in line with corporate programme and project management procedures.
• There is sound and inclusive decision making.
• There is clear accountability for the use of those resources in achieving defined outcomes for service users and local communities.

​​​​​​​4.6 Key to assessing the success of The Plan for North Lanarkshire and monitoring delivery of the Programme of Work (while ensuring each stage of delivery towards achieving the overall ambitions is appropriately planned, guided, implemented, and governed) are five inter-related corporate frameworks:

• Strategic Policy Framework
• Strategic Governance Framework
• Programme and Project Management Framework
• Strategic Performance Framework
• Strategic Self-Evaluation Framework

​​​​​​​4.7 To ensure these frameworks remain aligned to The Plan for North Lanarkshire and Programme of Work, all five are on an annual review and refresh programme. This also helps the Council to ensure it is proactive in responding to social, economic, and environmental trends and changes in legislation and governance, as well as the broad range of national policy changes and new developments.

4.8 ​​​​​​​Following publication of the Accounts Commission’s Best Value Assurance Report (BVAR) for North Lanarkshire Council in May 2019, updates on implementation of the eight recommendations for improvement were reported to the Policy and Strategy Committee in September 2019 and again in March 2020. The report in March 2020 consolidated the eight improvement actions within the Programme of Work to strengthen a corporate and integrated approach to improvement that supports delivery of The Plan for North Lanarkshire.

​​​​​​​4.9 During 2020/21, the emergence of COVID-19 began to have a significant impact on the Council’s delivery of planned day to day activities and achievement of strategic priorities, which was reflected in subsequent levels of performance. Following a desktop review of the performance indicators in the Strategic Performance Framework to identify those relating to services impacted by the pandemic, the CMT identified a tailored suite of measures for monthly management monitoring purposes. This included a national data dashboard through which important aspects of the local government response were monitored.

​​​​​​​4.10 To conclude the COVID recovery phase and move the Council’s focus onto renewal of services and continuation of business as usual towards achieving the ambitions and priorities set out in The Plan for North Lanarkshire, a COVID Recovery and Renewal Plan was approved in October 2020. This highlights how the Council adapted to new ways of working throughout the response and recovery phases and noted that many of the Council’s services continued to operate throughout lockdown and the subsequent phases of the Scottish Governments COVID-19 Routemap through and out of the crisis, with many having been redesigned to fit the needs of the community.

​​​​​​​4.11 With approval of Delivering for Communities in December 2020, and the Programme of Work reviewed and updated for 2021/22, the opportunity has been taken to re-evaluate aspects of the Strategic Performance Framework in light of the current local and national context and to develop and implement a Performance Reporting Schedule for 2021/22. This comprises arrangements for regular strategic performance reviews at CMT, service, statutory, and Strategic Performance Framework reporting to Committee, and a set of five non-negotiable standards to be applied when reporting performance. This allows regular reporting on progress of the Programme of Work to be reported to Service Committees and the Audit and Scrutiny Panel to enable Elected Members to monitor, assess, scrutinise, and inform areas requiring improvement and future decision making.

4.12 ​​​​​​​Following the decision taken by the Policy and Strategy Committee at its meeting in January 2020 to insource the delivery of culture, sport, and leisure services formerly provided by Culture and Leisure NL Limited (CLNL), progress reports to Committee in December 2020 and January 2021 highlighted the plan for recovery, associated financial implication, and key considerations linked to the workforce transfer strategy.